Mount Majestic is a fun romp, with all sorts of inventive ingredients:
• Piles of poison-tongued jumping turtles
• A castle built on top of a mountain that rises and falls once each day.
• A tyrant twelve-year-old pepper-hoarding king
• A terrible, life-changing, island-threatening 1,000 year old secret
Books with good heroines are hard to find. Most often the heroine is decidedly boyish (or at the very least tomboy-ish): armor-wearing, sword-swinging, that sort of thing. But Persimmony Smudge is a different sort. She dreams of battles, yes, but when it comes down to it, it’s her brain and her bravery, and not her battle skills, that save the day.
While I suspect the author is Christian there is no mention made of God. The only “supernatural” elements are a prophetic Lyre-That-Never-Lies, and clay pots that give the recipient what they need (and not what they might want). When the question is asked about who it is that puts the gifts in the pots, and puts “words of truth into the strings of a Lyre” the only answer we get is, “I have no idea.” So Mount Majestic is simply a fun read, without any spiritual depth – that dimension is left unexplored. Highly recommended, for girls in Grade 3 through early teens. Jon Dykstra blogs on books at ReallyGoodReads.com.